Country life – CHARLOTTE-ANNE FIDLER

September 2, 2018September 3, 2018

My Summer of Clever Watering

Charlotte-Anne Fidler, Lifestyle, Countryside, English country, Country house, English Houses, English Home, Gardens, Flowers, Cutting, Gardens, Nature, English, gardens, Roses, Rose garden, Sweet peas, Spring bulbs, Spring gardens, Spring planting, Summer planting, Summer gardens, White, Blooms, Home design, Interior design, Interiors, White interiors, House beautiful, Homes and Gardens, Maine Coons, Cats, Motherhood

As most gardeners know, plants need three things to make them happy: sunlight, good soil and plenty of water. With our rainy climate, most English gardeners focus on the first two and only worry about watering when they have young plants. But when, like me, you have a cutting garden full of seedlings and a bit of a thing about pots, watering can become a full-time task.

Surprisingly, considering the long and dull hours I’ve spent each summer with a hose in my hand, I hadn’t ever thought about irrigation. I’d noticed that some of the brilliant cut flower experts that I followed on Instagram used it. And I’d admired their perfect rows of flowers with black drip hoses snaking through them. I thought these systems were for professionals with acres of needy plug plants to water. How wrong I was!

This Spring, all that changed. I was approached by Gardena – whom, I realise now, are to irrigation and garden tools what BMW are to cars – and asked to trial their computerised watering systems. Pick the parts of your garden you want to water well, they said, and we’ll give you what you need. Obviously, I picked my cutting garden (remembering those pros and their hoses) and my labour-intensive pots.

A couple of weeks later, several rather large and exciting boxes arrived full of hoses, tubes, drip heads and a couple of very snazzy computers to attach to my garden taps. Over a couple of weekends, with the help of a patient and practically-minded neighbour, I installed them. Here’s what happened next:

The Cutting Garden

I already knew what irrigation in a cut flower border should look like, so this was very easy to install. My border is about 25 metres long and about 1.5 metres wide, so I have three rows of Micro-Drip Hose running through it.

How do Micro-Drip Hoses work? Every 30 cm there is a little hole that drips water when the system is on. That spacing is crucial as it matches the ideal spacing of plants in a cutting garden. I laid the hose in the morning and – with some help from Bo – planted my baby plants that afternoon. Simple!

Okay, so the hose doesn’t look so pretty at this stage. But, believe me, within a few weeks you won’t be able to see it.

See what I mean?!

And by July, it looks like this…

Why is a Micro-Drip hose perfect for a cutting garden? It’s the best way to get the water just where you need it, which is at the roots rather than the leaves where it can evaporate off – or the flowers, which can be damaged by heavy watering. It also uses up to 40% less water than overhead sprinklers. So, it’s far more eco and better for your utility bills!

Buckets of flowers for the house – this is what a cutting garden is all about

My cutting garden is always prolific, producing buckets of flowers for the house each week. But this year, I’ve noticed the plants are noticeably bigger and stronger looking. Importantly, they’ve lasted far longer into the season than they did when I hand watered. And this, remember, was during the hottest summer in over a century

The Pots

The only downside to pots is the watering. In summer, they need a good drink at least once a day. And when you have as many pots as I do….watering properly can lose you up to an hour each evening. I used to bribe my smallest daughter to do it, but irrigating them has proved far more efficient and, come to think of it, far less pricey.

Bo’s job was attaching the many drip heads to the irrigation tubes

Okay, so I’ll admit that putting the irrigation system together for my pots did take several hours. But I do have an excessive number of pots. And I did insist that each one needed its own little drip head (my neighbour is a saint!).

My pots! Beautifully irrigated and flourishing despite the hot, dry summer

As it turned out, this was a very smart move. With the summer temperatures hitting up to 30 degrees some days, the pots were drying out completely in the 24 hours between each water.

Hello, rather clever computer

At 7 pm each night, the clever computer system attached to my garden tap turned on the water for 15 minutes. I could have programmed it for any time of day and any amount of time, but I worked out that 15 minutes of dripping was what it took to keep my pots evenly moist (but not soggy).

The watering system saw me from my Spring planting of Violas, Narcissus and Tulips…

…to my Summer planting of Erigeron, Lavender, Petunias, Nicotiana and Geraniums.

Mousling loved watching the irrigation system working

Even Mousling approved! So, all in all, a huge success. The pots needed a little more feeding than usual (I think all that regular water tends to leach the minerals out of the potting compost faster), but otherwise, they thrived. And I had my summer evenings back…which was rather wonderful.

NOTE: This post was written in partnership with Gardena (https://www.gardena.com/uk/). But because I only partner with brands that fit with my lifestyle and standards, the opinions here are all my own.

February 26, 2018February 27, 2018

Meet the Maine Coons

Call me a crazy cat lady, but I think my first few blog posts would be incomplete without a post about our cats. They are, after all, the very heart and soul of our home. And, on Instagram, people began loving my cat pictures, long before they loved my house or my garden shots. So, I am hoping that there are some fans out there.

I grew up with cats. Lots of cats (I’m slightly reluctant to admit). My mother – a true animal lover – was a magnet for every waif and stray in the neighbourhood. They were all moggies and each had its own quirky little personality (some, unfortunately, more quirky than others). We loved them all and I still remember their names decades later: Sootica, Minilow, Lupin, Sweet Pea, Greyling, Snoopy, Waldo, Marmite…..see what I mean about lots of cats?

When I moved to London and bought my first flat, I truly missed having feline company. And it was while I was researching ‘cat breeds happy to live indoors’, that I discovered Maine Coons. Extraordinary to think that a breed of outsize American farm cats could be happy in a tiny basement flat, but it was quite true….

Maine Coons really are something else. As well as being fantastically beautiful – those ear tufts! Those gigantic paws! Those plume-tails! – they are consummate comedians. I laugh out loud every day at my cats – from their bathroom acrobatics first thing in the morning, to their dinner table lolling in the evening. They are also very sociable; almost doglike in their friendliness. They follow me around the house in a small pack; sit down where I sit; sleep where I sleep; and, as my Instagram followers know too well, they perch on the Boot Room window sill waiting patiently for me to come home.

Now that I’m freelance, I’ve had a chance to spend whole days with them and got to know their little routines. Poff puts himself to bed straight after breakfast (how many of us wish we could do the same?) and stays there till midday when he joins me working at the kitchen table. Mousling always knows when it’s Bo’s bedtime and curls up on her bed waiting for night-time cuddles.

They are not lap cats – Maine Coons are far too full of personality to be that compliant. But they are brilliant companions. They are truly the best furry PAs. And the last few years, working from home, would have been far less fun without them.

Poffum is the boss and, quite simply, an all-round awesome cat. I often say to my girls, if Poffum was a man, he’d be the perfect husband. Loyal, well-behaved, smart, fantastically handsome, affectionate, but not clingy…

Poff, as we call him, is nearly always ‘the cat in the window’. Being the boss, he likes to keep an eye on what the birds, cows, neighbouring cats and general wildlife are doing.

Underneath Poff’s handsome exterior, beats the heart of a badass hunter. He looks innocent enough here, but beneath his paw is, most likely, a dead mouse which he will leave, neatly arranged, on the doorstep.

Nimbus is the bad boy of the family. Nim watches me arrange flowers and then destroys the arrangement, one flower at a time, and pushes the vase off the table for good measure.

Nim considers my bed his territory and spends much of the day luxuriantly stretched out on it. I complain about his fur and dirty paws on the duvet, but the sight of him there fills me with such awe and yearning, I let him stay….

Nim is also known as Elf-Cat. Partly because of his ethereal, good looks; and partly because of his penchant for climbing the Christmas tree.

Mousling is the baby of the family. We usually have only two Maine Coons at a time – but, when we met her two years ago, Mousling was far too cute to resist. And, because she’s a girl, she fitted right in.

She might be smaller than the boys, but Mouse is quite a feisty little creature. She has her own schedule, which is completely different from Poff and Nim’s and she’s slowly and subtly eroding Poff’s top-cat status (she regularly sleeps in his favourite spots).

When she’s not sleeping in Poff’s spots, Mousling is forever exploring new sleeping place options….Princess and the Pea piles of quilts, the linen cupboard…..

….Or the Boot Room

Finally, the Furry PAs at their desks. You can see how hard they work. I don’t know what I’d do without them!

February 18, 2018February 27, 2018

Into the Snowdrop woods

Sometimes, life knocks you around so much that you wonder if you’ll ever feel joy again. And, I have to admit, this is how I’ve been feeling a lot lately – certainly not helped by the Winter gloom and cold. But, this morning, driving over the Marlborough Downs in the sunshine with the radio on and the girls laughing in the car, I actually felt the stirrings of happiness. One of the reasons, I’m sure, was that we were on our way to see Snowdrops.

When you live in the country, you gradually learn the special places to visit at different times of year: the farm with the sweetest new-born lambs; the best wood for Bluebells; the prettiest Christmas market. But, even though I’ve grown used to the sight of Snowdrops in the gardens and roadside verges, at this time of year, I’d never found somewhere to see them en masse.

Nothing quite prepares you for what five acres of Snowdrops looks like; the otherwise colourless woodland, lit up by a carpet of dazzling white. From a distance, it looks like snow (no surprise there!). Close up, the nodding heads are green-edged and beautifully intricate. We ooh-ed and ah-ed and got down on our knees to get a better view. And to smell them. I didn’t realise Snowdrops smelt until today. It’s the loveliest scent: soft and sweet and sometimes there and sometimes not.

We walked around for an hour taking it all in. And then walked around some more because the sun had come out again and the snowdrops were now all edged in light. I can’t tell you how wonderful it was to be out in the fresh air, looking at something so extraordinary and forgetting, for a while, about everything but the moment.

Most great Snowdrop woods are on the sites of former monasteries. The owners of this wood, at Welford Park in Berkshire, think the Snowdrops were planted by Norman monks to use in their Church for the February feast of Candlemas and as a headache cure.

The plant name for the common Snowdrop is Galanthus Nivalis (from the Greek gala, meaning milk, and anthos , meaning flower). But their other old, country names are ‘Candelmas Bells’, ‘dingle-dangle’ and ‘February Fairmaid’.

Snowdrops have naturalised so freely around the country that we like to think of them as a thoroughly British flower. But they were probably introduced from Southern Europe, either by the Romans or, it’s now thought, later, in the 16^th Century.

I’ve always wondered why you find Snowdrops so often in graveyards. Apparently, it’s because, in the language of flowers, they symbolise purity.

Traditionally, it’s bad luck to pick Snowdrops and bring them into the house, but I flout country lore and love putting tiny bunches in small vases. Another idea is to dig up a clump, pot it up and surround it with moss.

Snowdrops might look delicate, but they are tough little bulbs and pretty easy to grow. Because they’re woodland plants, they’re happiest in dappled shade and humus rich soil.

Snowdrops hate drying out. So, if you’re planning your own Snowdrop show, make sure that you plant them in ‘the green’. This means you order them now (my favourite supplier is www.clare-bulbs.co.uk) and plant them as soon as you get them. They will arrive in bundles with their leaves still on. I plant mine 2-3 inches deep in clusters of about three.

To help them naturalise, divide established clumps like these every year, splitting them into smaller sections and replanting them immediately (I am not so good at doing this. But I should if I want a display anything like this!)